Tazina, Al, and I sat before the counter, staring at 327480’s device propped up on a kickstand, our reflections the only thing appearing on the black screen. Whatever was on this device could be the key to taking down the System once and for all. That was… terrifying.
“Are you ready?” Al asked.
“Not at all,” I replied.
“We can’t just sit here staring at it,” Tazina said. “Come on,” she said, waving her hand frantically through the air. “I wanna see what’s on it. Do the thing.”
“Ah, yes,” Al replied. “ ‘Do the thing.’ How very technical of you.”
“Shut up.”
I reached for the device and pressed the on button at the top corner three times. When the lock screen appeared, I entered the code 327480 had given to us: 02460.
The screen was immediately filled with darkly lit image and video tiles. Al scrolled through the seemingly endless stream of tiles. There had to be hundreds of them.
“That’s… a lot,” I commented.
“Well,” Tazina said, slowly backing her chair away from the counter, “I’ll let you two have fun.” With that, she returned to her computer on the other side of the room.
“These don’t seem to be dated,” Al said as he continued scrolling. “Itweteuwtojiwmkelfdees together a timeline from these.”
“A timeline?” I repeated. “Does that matter?”
Al shrugged, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe, maybe not. Onewtjioewrkfmweajthuewijstijewlking. If we can.”
“If we can what?” I asked.
“Go through everything. There’s a chance this stuff’s designed to be erased after viewing. I’ve seen it before.”
I stared down at the device. At the dim images of unauthorized System areas. Would 327480 have done that? “She wanted this information to get out,” I said. “I don’t think she’d risk erasing it.”
“Either way,” Al said as he slid a stack of paper to me, “we need to record anything and everything we can.”
“You know my hearing’s shit, so you’ll have to be the one recording any audio on here.”
Al smirked. “Oh, look at you just outright admitting that.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, leaning toward the device.
“You hear that, Taz!” Al yelled. “Stheiowkmfewiutop! Ywoitjkewlmrkjweurijler!”
Tazina’s rowdy laughter echoed through the room as I continued scrolling. If it was like other System devices, the oldest might be at the bottom.
“There,” I said when I couldn’t scroll anymore. I leaned back in my chair and glanced at Al. “Are you ready?”
He nodded. “Let’s do this.”
I opened the final video tile and pressed play.
To be continued…